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Thanks for posting the corresponding dairy fat percentages! Around here cream is labeled simply "Cream XX%", which has left me dazed in the dairy aisle many times.

Land O'Lakes makes a fat free half and half. Has anybody used it in recipes that call for cream? I wonder if a version of whipped cream could be made from it.

i use that fat free half'n'half for coffee and i pretty much always feel like i'm drinking pure chemicals...how can it be fat free?? and still taste yum and have that creamy consistency??

Fat free half and half is an oxymoron (and gross, too).

It is usually made of skim (nonfat) milk and and corn syrup solids, for thickening, I guess.

Here's the real scam, though - it is NOT lower in calories than regular half and half!!! So really, there is no point in using it - you're not saving calories! You're just replacing fat calories with sugar calories, and what's the point in that?

Just use the real stuff.

Aldyth, I'm thinking that the fat-free half-and-half probably won't work for whipped cream, which needs a good amount of fat in order to get it to whip up and stay firm.

Figuring out how they make fat-free half-and-half would be another good post! Stay tuned for that!

I was dubious about fat-free half and half, but when Cook's Illustrated gave a qualified thumbs up to the Land O'Lakes version, I gave it a try. Not bad. We usually just put milk in our coffee, but I do pick up the low-fat Land O'Lakes version sometimes. I find artificial creamer to be completely vile, so they seem to be doing something different.

I consume a relatively low amount of processed foods, but probably more than a lot of people here.

Here in Canada our fat percentages for cream are quite different but the names are similar which explains why recipes don't always work from country to country.

We have Light 5%,
Half and Half 10%
Table 18%
whipping 30%

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Dana - thanks for posting that! Why must we be different, it's just confusing.

They could of course, just list the % of fat on the cream. Instead of the milk / cream distinction we could just have a spectrum of percentage creams. 38% milk! Woo!

Since I'm lactose intolerant, I regularly substitute coconut milk for cream in most recipes with excellent results. It doesn't really work well for the whipping (nor does it really cut down on fat or calories) but it tastes fantastic in most soups and purees!

Hanna,

I totally agree that we should demand that there be an international treaty to rationalize the cream percentages!

Dana